New Jersey Save Our Schools reminds us that “school choice” was closely associated with resistance to court-ordered school desegregation in the South. Not only vouchers but segregation academies (“schools of choice”) were havens for whites fleeing contact with blacks.

Save Our Schools NJ Statement on School Choice Week

This week, there will be a concerted national effort to use the idea of parental school choice to advance an entirely different agenda.

We want to remind our legislators and those marketing school choice that legitimate school choices:
• Ensure every child has access to a high-quality public school education;
• Do not segregate or discriminate against our children on the basis of income, English proficiency, special needs, race, gender, religion or sexual preference;
• Are transparent in the sources and uses of their funding and in their educational outcomes;
• Are democratically controlled by local communities.

Unfortunately, what is being promoted by “choice” advocates does not come even close to meeting these standards.

Vouchers arose in Southern states during the 1960s, as a method of perpetuating segregation. To prevent children of color from attending their all-white schools, some districts actually closed those public schools and issued vouchers to parents that were only good at privately segregated schools, known as segregation academies.

The more recent history of voucher use in other states confirms that they continue to increase segregation.

Unfortunately, many charter schools have the same segregating effect.

For example, the recent Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO) study of New Jersey charter schools found that New Jersey’s traditional public schools served four and a half times as many students with Limited English Proficiency and one and a half times as many special-needs students as did the charter schools. Rutgers Professor Bruce Baker has documented that this segregation also includes income, with charter schools serving a wealthier population of students than comparable traditional public schools.

New Jersey Department of Education statistics confirm that a number of New Jersey charter schools are also segregated by race and ethnicity.

Until school choice advocates can ensure that greater options for some parents do not equal more segregation for all of our children, their claims of looking out for the needy do not ring true.

Joining an all-white country club is also a choice, but not one that we would ever support.

——-

Save Our Schools NJ is a nonpartisan, grassroots organization of parents and other concerned residents whose more than 10,000 members believe that all NJ children should have access to a high quality public education.

“School Choice” is a misleading term. The “choice” is not made by the student or the parents, it’s made by the owners/administrators of the charter schools who will accept the students they want and send the other students back to the public schools.

I don’t like racial segregation in any setting. Many private schools make an effort to have a diverse enrollment. Where government funding is involved–for example, public schools, charter schools, and voucher schools–there should be no segregation. Period.

I don’t see government funding as a meaningful factor in this analysis. As New Jersey Save Our Schools reminds, “[j]oining an all-white country club is also a choice, but not one that we would ever support.”

“Many private schools make an effort to have a diverse enrollment.”

Right. NYC also made “an effort” to have a diverse enrollment at G&T schools, and at the selective high schools. I have a strong, strong suspicion that the percentage of Caucasians at NYC’s top prep schools — e.g. Trinity, Brearley, Collegiate, Spence, Dalton — is *substantially* higher than the neighboring public schools, including at the selective high schools whose admissions practices are under fire for being discriminatory. Stuyvesant is about 80% “minority” if you use the definition of “minority” that the private schools use when they advertise their diversity.

So Diane, what does that mean for 90+ percent white, suburban schools in affluent suburbs where 90-95% of the population can’t afford to live? Have you talked with people in such suburbs who move there because they don’t want their kids to go to school with “those kids”? Is that voluntary segregation? Or is that ok?

Joe,
What do you think of schools in Minneapolis that are all-white, all-black, all-Hispanic? Why can’t they be integrated?
Don’t you think that where integration is possible, we should avoid segregated schools? Especially at public expense.
Why should the public pay for segregation academies?
Diane

“Don’t you think that where integration is possible, we should avoid segregated schools? Especially at public expense. Why should the public pay for segregation academies?”

Ah, and there it is again, the rhetoric of the public not as citizens but as “taxpayers.” It is seductive. We all use it.

Diane, I’m interested to hear your views on where integration is “possible.” I assume from your statement that you believe integration is *not* possible at some institutions. Is integration impossible at country clubs? At Exeter and Dalton and Harvard and Yale?

If all we’re doing is collecting statements that “segregation is bad,” ok, sure, we can all do that. But my BS detector goes off any time a privileged white person complains loudly about how somebody else is doing something racist.

This is actually a stunning way to frame this issue. Maybe the public shouldn’t pay for “segregation academies.” It certainly seems self-evident.

But if the public in general shouldn’t pay for “segregation academies,” why should you pay for it personally? Isn’t that *literally* what parents who pay the massive tuition at Dalton are doing?

Usually when people distinguish between segregation by public and private institutions, they express the latter as unfortunate but beyond our control — i.e., “Look, you know me, I disapprove of that country club as much as you do, and I wish this weren’t the case, but the club has the right to exclude blacks.” Here it’s “I disapprove of that country club as much as you do, and I wish this weren’t the case, but I have the right to join that country club.”

Or “Look, I want to give that segregated country club money, but I wouldn’t dare force anyone who doesn’t agree with segregation to give it theirs.”

Diane – I respect that as a very important question. Having been in various civil rights marches and as a son of one first Head Start director in Kansas, who insisted decades ago that the program must be racially integrated, I’ve thought a lot about this issue.

Below is a link to a presentation that Minnesota’s former Civil Rights Diane – I respect that as a very important question. Having been in various civil rights marches and as a son of one first Head Start director in Kansas, who insisted decades ago that the program must be racially integrated, I’ve thought a lot about this issue.

Below is a link to a presentation that Minnesota’s former Civil Rights Commissioner, the first African American elected to the St. Paul City Council and the first African American elected city council President and I made. Bill experienced forced segregation as a child in Indiana.

He asks, “What can we learn from the colleges from which Martin Luther King, Alice Walker, Thurgood Marshall, Toni Morrison, Spike Lee, Ossie Davis, Marian Wright Edelman, etc. graduated?” He and I agree that k-12 schools, that are actively chosen, like higher education, Morehouse, Spelman, Howard, etc., which are all or predominantly one race should be available, as an option to families.

As Bill wrote, “There is a huge difference between offering families of color high quality options, and telling them that they have no choice but must attended one clearly inferior school because of their race. . Yet some critics make no distinction. Why is it acceptable for some (white) Minnesotans to be allowed to choose a school predominantly white, but apparently not acceptable for families of color to have a variety of choices, some of which are predominantly one race? Shouldn’t we pay attention to the fact that the majority of schools identified by the Star Tribune (Minnesota’s largest daily paper) as “Beat the Odds” in reading and math are chartered schools serving predominantly students from one racial group? ”
Commissioner, the first African American elected to the St. Paul City Council and the first African American elected city council President and I made. Bill experienced forced segregation as a child in Indiana.

He asks, “What can we learn from the colleges from which Martin Luther King, Alice Walker, Thurgood Marshall, Toni Morrison, Spike Lee, Ossie Davis, Marian Wright Edelman, etc. graduated?” He and I agree that k-12 schools, that are actively chosen, like higher education, Morehouse, Spelman, Howard, etc., which are all or predominantly one race should be available, as an option to families.

As Bill wrote, “There is a huge difference between offering families of color high quality options, and telling them that they have no choice but must attended one clearly inferior school because of their race. . Yet some critics make no distinction. Why is it acceptable for some (white) Minnesotans to be allowed to choose a school predominantly white, but apparently not acceptable for families of color to have a variety of choices, some of which are predominantly one race? Shouldn’t we pay attention to the fact that the majority of schools identified by the Star Tribune (Minnesota’s largest daily paper) as “Beat the Odds” in reading and math are chartered schools serving predominantly students from one racial group? ”

A NJ public school principal speaks: “Many of these…do not serve second language learners…their special needs population usually averages between two and five percent, compared to 20 – 30 percent in comprehensive high schools….” He is talking in these two sentences about selective MAGNET schools in New Jersey.

But I understand many of the folks complaining about charters think it’s ok for district schools to have explicit, high admissions standards. Schools open to all if run independently of a district = bad. Schools with explicit high admissions tests that prevent many kids with special needs and students for English language learners from entering = good

Some of the parents and educators who have started charters around the country are educators fed up with the way districts created these elite, quasi-private schools.

we are opposed to segregation by magnets as well, but those types of magnets are not being proliferated across New Jersey while there is a strong push from the State to increase the numbers of charter schools and to introduce vouchers.

While we categorically reject vouchers, we are not opposed to charter schools, but we believe communities must have local control over their opening and the admission lottery process must be adjusted to address the segregation. Right now, neither is the case in New Jersey, increasing segregation and creating significant pushback against charter schools by communities across the state.

Millions of tax payer dollars have gone into creating selective quasi private magnet schools in New Jersey and other states. I’m delighted to hear you are opposed to magnets with admissions tests – are you actively challenging them? Are you urging that they not be allowed to have such admissions? I’ve looked through various documents & don’t see it.

Looks like your group is anti vouchers (which I agree with) and anti charters unless local school boards say ok – (which generally does not happen unless the charter is a “last chance school”. The whole idea of charters is to give parents and educators a chance to create distinctive public schools open to all.

Having lived through the civil rights era and women’s rights eras, I have mixed feelings about local control. Local control for many years meant far inferior facilities for people of color, far inferior sports and other facilities for young women. What are the limits of local control for you and your organization? Are you ok with a school saying boys will have far better facilities than girls? Are you ok with a school board saying no kids of color can come to this school?

Are you ok with a school board saying no students whose families can’t afford to live in this district can attend (that’s a present day “local control.” As I noted, there are “public” school districts in the state where the price of admission is the ability to purchase a home for at least 1 million (I’ve visited such “public” districts on Long Island.

So are you ok with exclusive virtually all white, virtually all wealthy “public” school districts?

We believe that public education should be democratically, locally controlled. You point out some of the potential downsides of such local control, but we believe that the alternative of giving the State the right to force things on communities is much worse.

Just look at what is happening with school closings, which are disproportionately and very negatively hitting low-income communities of color as Mayors and Governors and Presidents impose unproven and unpopular policies that those communities reject but have no ability to stop. Today’s civil rights hearing in DC on this issue is a great example of such local communities fighting back: http://parentsacrossamerica.org/report-journey-justice-2-hearing-d-c/

Is Howard University segregated? Is Morehouse? Is Fisk? No one is forced to attend any of those institutions. No one is forced to attend any of the charters schools that Orfield criticizes. And fortunately, those schools received almost (not quite but almost) as much money as district public schools. I wish they received the same $ but that’s politics.

I previously posted comments from the former Commissioner of Civil Rights, Bill Wilson, who was appointed by liberal Democrat Rudy Perpich to his post. Wilson was first Africa American elected to the St. Paul Mn City Council Wilson points out key differences between giving people of color choices among schools, including districts and charters, and being forced to attend an extremely inferior school because of his race.

Wilson experienced what it was like to be sent to an inferior school because of his race. He is a strong advocate of integration and a strong advocate of allowing families to allow families to choose among district and charter public schools. He founded a school that is on the “Beat the Odds” list published by Minnesota’s largest daily paper, the (MInneapolis) Star Tribune.

In terms of “stop knocking public education,” our Center runs a leadership academy that has attracted both district & charter public schools. Local teacher unions have asked me to help them with several projects. And as noted, I write a weekly column, examples of which I’ve posted, in which I often praise outstanding district schools and teachers, as well as outstanding charters.

So Diane, are you in favor of local control that allows suburban “public” schools to take low income families to court for daring to try to enroll their kids? Are you in favor of local control if it means young women receive inferior facilities? I’m just wondering how far your praise of local control extends.

Joe, how do you feel about the hyper-segregation in the charter schools of Minneapolis? I will post about Myron Orfield’s study of segregation in the charter schools of the Twin Cities. He says that three-quarters of Minn. charters are segregated, and they get worse results than the public schools.
Stop knocking public education. You think you are still a progressive, but your movement has been hijacked by the far-right. ALEC and the Walton Foundation and Scott Walker and Rick Scott and Rick Snyder agree with you. Isn’t that embarrassing to you?

Joe, local control should be about giving the people in the community who are the direct beneficiaries of that public education a representative voice. There are things that can happen on a state level to curb issues such as ” a school board saying no students whose families can’t afford to live in this district”–that has partly been addressed by the Interdistrict Choice Program. But true choice has to be everything on the menu, including neighborhood schools.

If a parent is faced with the option of sending their child to a failing neighborhood school (or worse yet no neighborhood school), or a thriving magnet or charter that’s not a real choice–that’s survival. It’s the same as offering a person raw chicken and grilled steak, which woild you eat? Did you have a choice?

DMatias, don’t fall into the mp corporate reform trap of referring to a “failing neighborhood school.” Most schools with low scores are NOT failing schools, but schools that serve a high proportion of kids with unaddressed needs. When you use their rhetoric, you are on the path to abandoning your neighborhood school for a marketplace of worse choices.

Does Save our Schools concern itself with faculty have affairs with students? What if any actions have you recommended so that this does not happen again?

“N.J. high school sex scandal: 3 teachers, 2 administrators charged

“A permissive culture at a suburban New Jersey high school allowed three teachers to engage in sexual affairs with students, in violation of school policy and the law, and two administrators failed to take action on the relationships, prosecutors allege.”

Since I’ve tried to answer questions from Diane and our New Jersey colleagues, I hope you will answer a few questions of mine:

1. Diane and others who are criticizing federal intervention…does that mean no federal invention? No efforts to make sure all races can vote? No efforts to require young women to have equal access to athletic facilities? Are you opposed to Congress deciding to direct millions of dollars to serve students from low income families? I am not defending everything the fed govn’t does but I am surprised by

2. To those don’t like predominantly African Am or Hispanic k-12 schools that families have actively chosen – are you opposed to public funds going to Morehouse, Howard, Spelman and other predominantly African American colleges/universities?

3. Do you see a difference between
a. AFrican American, Hispanic and other families being given no choice, and required to attend schools with much lower funds and much worse facilities and
b. Those same families being given options to attend various public schools (including public schools outside the district where they live, and charter public schools?

4. Do you favor school boards hiring detectives who check to make sure that all students attending “public” schools in extremely affluent, virtually all white suburban districts actually live in the district? Do you favor school board taking to court low income parents who don’t live in such districts, and who enroll their children? (For what it’s worth, Mn also pioneered allowing students to cross district lines to attend public schools outside their districts).

We support inter-district public school choice that is administered in a way that does not actually increase segregation. Simply providing choice to parents generally increases segregation as families are drawn to schools populated by those more like themselves. It also can cream off the better performing students, leaving the more challenging ones concentrated and harder to serve.

Without subsidies for transportation, it is only really usable by wealthier families, which can afford to pay for their children to go to another district. Finally, if it is set up like in NJ, it takes the financial resources from high-poverty school districts without substantively decreasing the number of students they have to serve. Given high fixed costs in education, that leaves those districts less able to provide for the remaining students.

As to the local control issue, the state should always have the right to intervene to protect civil rights and enforce broader laws. What the state should not have the right to do is intervene to force a unproven “choice” on a community that reflects a Mayor’s or Governor’s political agenda and goes against that community’s wishes.

As you know, local democratic control is rarely taken from wealthier, majority white districts. It is much more common to see it stripped from low-income communities of color — ergo today’s Journey for Justice.

Removing local democratic control of education is also increasingly combined with de-funding these districts. None of this benefits communities of color.

Teaching econ…I’m a big fan of classes and programs that challenge very bright kids. This can be done within a regular high school via A.P, I,B, Dual Enrollment classes for example (which I think that you mentioned a child of yours had participated in). We can have some special classes for youngsters for are very talented at younger ages. Also, helped develop a law that allows high school students to take classes for free on college campuses.

But there are lots of downsides for “separate schools” just for “the gifted.” Recent cheating scandals at exclusive NYC district g/t schools help illustrate problems. NY Times has covered this extensively.
Also, kids at such “exclusive” schools can develop unrealistic, patronizing attitudes toward other kids.

I was very good at math, reading and writing, but terrible in wood shop. It was very good for me to take woodshop classes – helped me understand that students were good at different things.

So yes we should give opportunities for kids to challenge themselves and be challenged – but we don’t need to do that via schools that only serve a few using standardized tests of dubious validity.

It is certainly true that “creaming” within a school building is more convenient than taking high performing students out of the building, but that was not really an option for my son. Given that he was taking three courses at the university the fall of his senior year and another course on line, it really would have made more sense for him not to have taken his last two classes at the high school if only because of the logistics of getting back and forth between the two campuses.

My point is a broader one, however. Dr. Ravitch and many others condemn “skimming” because “skimming” Paul enriches Paul and makes Peter worse off (usually the argument concerns taking active parents out of the local schools). If Dr. Ravitch is correct, not allowing Paul to be “skimmed” will enrich Peter at the expense of Paul. Why is it that public policy should only care about Peter?

You begin to make an argument that Dr. Ravitch is incorrect by saying Paul is not necessarily advantaged by “skimming”. I think that will be a difficult argument to make given the research on peer impacts for high performing students. I know in my son’s case, he is a far far happier student now that he has been “skimmed” by his highly selective university than he was in high school, where his academic interest and talents isolated him from the vast majority of the student body.

Glad we agree that state or local govn should have power to intervene to protect civil rights.

In many places, communities of color have flocked to charters. Legislators allocate $ for the education of children, not for the protection of particular systems. Some of the charters in NJ are far more effective with students from low income students (not all, but some).

And not all students thrive in huge traditional high schools that are found in some NJ suburbs.

Joe,
Minneapolis has disgraceful segregation in its charter schools. I will be posting about this soon. You are using the same sophistry as the Southern demagogues of the 1960s.
There is a longstanding tradition of federalism in the U.S.
The federal government has a strong role in protecting civil rights and in distributing funds equitably to those who are neediest (not to those who win a race!).
Education is a state and local function.
No secretary of education until Duncan thought that he was entitled to tell every school district in the nation how to reform.
That he was criticized by the NSBA.

Fierper, I gues it depends on what you define as “extreme segregation.” People all over the cities, including the lowest income areas, have a number of public school choices, including the option to send their children to suburbs, with state funds paying transportation costs.

So are there segregated schools in the sense that Diane rightly criticizes many southern states – where low income and African American families were assigned to bad schools and had no choices? No.
Are there high performing charters that are actively selected by families? Yes? Are there some low performing district and charter schools that have mostly low income and students of color? Yes.

Diane, the Secretary of Education you worked for certainly told schools what to do. A number of recent Secretaries of Education have strongly promoted various policies (some of which I oppose, such as vouchers).

Do you really want to assert, “No secretary of education until Duncan thought he was entitled to tell every school district in the country how to reform.”

Diane, did you know that Rosa Parks spent time during the last decade of her life trying to start charter public schools in Detroit? She’s hardly a southern Racist.

Did you know Kenneth Clark’s 1968 article in Harvard Ed Review in which he calls for creation of public schools not controlled by local school boards? He, like many African Americans, became fed up with local districts. Is Kenneth Clark a southern demagogue?

Actually, Diane, African American, Hispanic and Native American families are voting with their feet. Clearly you and Orfield don’t like it – do you think they should NOT be allowed to attend “beat the odds” schools that are predominantly African American or Hispanic?
Are you going to tell African American parents they can’t go to a “beat the odds” school created by a former African American state human rights commissioner?

Some Mpls families of color are allowed to send their kids to suburban schools. Orfield likes that, and I agree it should be an option too.

The differences between what I’m talking about and what Southern demagogues talked about is this:
In the south (and parts of the midwest and north), low income and families of color
a. Did NOT have CHOICES among schools that respected leaders and families had created -in the 40’s 50’s ad 60’s families of color were assigned to schools. It was only white people who had choices.
b. Did not have funds to start up public schools. Federal startup funds now are available.

So African American, Hispanic and Native Am families have been empowered – and they like having those options.

“And when the school’s top administrators were told of the alleged activities, Principal Catherine DePaul and Vice Principal Jernee Kollock worked to protect the teachers rather than turn them in, authorities allege.”

Sorry, this goes with last post: “A sex scandal erupted Thursday at a high school here, and a top law enforcement official said a culture of permissiveness allowed male teachers to pursue sexual relationships with female students.”

Does “save our schools” also work to protect students from situations like this?

We are a volunteer, grass roots group of more than 10,000 parents and other public school supporters, so we focus on only a few issues. Our primary areas are: ensuring adequate and equitable school funding, stopping high stakes testing, opposition to vouchers, and reforming New Jersey’s broken charter school law.

Thanks for sharing this information. I certainly understand that individuals and organizations have to set priorities.

In standing up for students, please consider whether there are ways to more effective monitor what happens so that there are not additional incidents where allegedly, as noted in the article about a suburban NJ High school, “culture of permissiveness allowed male teachers to pursue sexual relationships with female students.” As noted over the last few days, sadly, this seems to be a problem in some schools throughout the country.

Reading this debate, there are a couple of things with which I feel the need to take issue. First and foremost, I want to commend Save our Schools NJ on their overall efforts. I think that there is more on which we agree, particularly in the area of standardized testing, which in my opinion is the single most carcinogenic and debilitating aspect of our education system, than which we disagree, but the areas where we disagree are where I think that their positions are most problematic.

One of the most serious problems that I have with their agenda is the primacy that they place on “democracy” and local control (aka home rule). While I imagine that many, if not most, if not all of our country’s states have flawed democracies, I have a hard time imagining one whose flaws are as acute as New Jersey, a machine politics state where most elections, primary and general, are rigged before a single vote is cast. This creates problems on numerous levels of public policy, but the impact of this problem is particularly problematic with regards to education policymaking in general and how schools are administered on both a macro and micro level.

“Democracy” enables local communities, regardless of the percentage of registered voters who are parents of children in the schools, to vote against school budgets just because they think that doing so will lower their property taxes. “Democracy” empowers school boards that do not require candidates to be parents of children in the schools and/or have any kind of demonstrable background in education. These elected and uneducated/undereducated school board members have enormous power over the degree to which the true educational professionals (principals, department heads, teachers, and counselors) are able to be effective in the education of our children.

Home rule, particularly in the most densely populated state in the country, which could leverage that quality to create the model for educational efficiency for our country, has created the most inefficient system of educating our children imaginable, wasting hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars every year that could be spent on hiring more teachers and/or paying them more and/or better/more educational resources, because over 600 local school districts feel the need to have their own overpaid superintendents (and in many cases assistant superintendents), overpaid business managers (and in many cases assistant business managers), and support staffs, negotiating personnel and purchasing contracts on a district-by-district basis.

These problems make the provision of a thorough and efficient education much more difficult, and in some parts of the state nearly impossible. Add to these existing problems a terribly flawed charter school law and a poorly-implemented inter-district school choice program and we have the toxic situation that we have at the moment that is has become even worse under the influence of the privatization profiteers that have become empowered by our state’s Governor, Chris Christie, and his allies in the Democratic Party, political machine bosses, Steve Adubato and George Norcross. What is the solution to these problems? A bold and progressive vision for education in our state is our only hope.

First and foremost, we have to recognize that both suburban and urban education have serious problems that need to be solved, but that their problems are very different and require very different solutions. The first step towards improving education in our urban areas is the realization that very little of consequence can be done to improve our urban schools until we address crime and poverty. This is not to say that nothing can or should be done, but it is nearly impossible to produce significant improvements in learning environments without simultaneously improving the living environments of the children in these schools.

I believe that if we realize this, then we can more easily accept the idea that more can be done for the small percentage of children who have somehow found a way to comparatively thrive in these otherwise toxic learning environments than we can do for those who aren’t and that skimming will have a far more positive impact on those children’s lives than the negative impact on those who are left behind. This might be a callous and cold approach to this very serious problem, but when we consider the horrific state of urban education in our state and in our country, I think that any other approach than one that employs a triage mentality is even more callous and cold.

If we can accept a triage approach to urban education, then I would argue that the inter-district school choice program and magnet schools are far superior to charter schools, many, if not most, if not all of which have been mass produced by for-profit charter school incubators that care far more about maximizing profit than educating children and have little, if anything, to do with the original intent of charter schools, which was to be laboratories for innovation. I also believe that the inter-district school choice program can go a long way towards solving the fiscal problems that organically-developed suburban charter schools create in the communities in which they have been established.

While it is true that our state’s suburban public schools are amongst the best in the country, I believe that this says more about the rest of the country than it does about our schools. It would be very easy for far too many of our schools to rest on their laurels and high test scores and not feel the need to innovate on both an academic and social dynamic level and because it is very easy, far too many do, which creates missed opportunity after missed opportunity to make our suburban schools much better than they already are.

I think that a perfect example of this is a school district like East Brunswick, a very good school district by every imaginable measure, which has wasted so much time, energy, and money fighting the Hebrew immersion charter school in its midst and has cut its programs deeply as a result of funds lost to Hatikvah when it should have utilized the inter-district school choice program to bring in students from nearby New Brunswick that would have filled the gap left behind by the students whose parents chose to send them to Hatikvah.

Aside from the flawed funding model, the single greatest flaw in the current charter school legislation is the narrow perspective that it has on who a charter school should serve. Middlesex County has a community college that serves the entire county as well as people from outside that county. There is no reason that an organically-developed charter school should be required to serve only a single or select few communities, particularly considering the negative fiscal impact that it is undoubtedly going to have on those communities-at-large because those impacts are so narrowly concentrated. These negative fiscal impacts could be mitigated somewhat by allowing charter schools to broaden their reach.

I believe that we need to radically transform how we administrate, fund, and organize public education. We need to end home rule, replacing local school districts with county school districts and use state income taxes rather than local property taxes to fund education. We need to negotiate personnel and purchasing contracts at the state level so that we can leverage our state’s population density and get the most bang for our buck.

We can still elect local school boards, but candidates should be limited to parents of children in the schools and once elected, they should be required to educate themselves at their own expense about education theory and policy. Elected local school boards should not have any power over the education professionals who are responsible for the education of our children, but instead should serve in an advisory and advocacy capacity to both the schools and the county education administration.

That said, I recognize that such a radical transformation will never be suggested, much less implemented by the cowards who run for and serve in most of our elected offices. Thus, to take the pressure off of them, I propose a system whereby the voters in our communities could decide on an annual basis whether or not to have their community be part of their county school district. If the voters choose to remain independent from this system, their schools would be funded solely with local property taxes.

As an independent school district, they would have no financial liability for any children whose parents choose to send them to a charter school even if the school is located within the boundaries of their district as charter schools, like traditional schools in participating districts, would be funded with state income tax dollars and have their budgets based on the number of students that they serve. School budgets would be the sole responsibility of the independent school district’s elected school board and there would be no separate vote on school budgets.

I believe that giving voters this choice between independence from or participation with a county school district would finally give the people in our state the opportunity to see the cost of home rule and decide whether or not they want to continue to pay it. I also believe that it gives communities the opportunity to decide whether or not they are going to be impacted by charter schools without threatening their existence.

That said, even if we don’t radically transform how we administrate, fund, and organize public education, I believe that broadening the reach of charter schools and making the inter-district school choice program more robust could go a long way towards resolving many of the conflicts and problems with which proponents of public education in all of its forms are trying to manage.

Bertin, please stop referring to Hatikvah charter school in East Brunswick as organic. As I posted on Jazzzman’s page, I’ll repeat:

“You’re acting as though this school was organically created and just happened to win a grant from Steinhardt, when in fact, he specially created the HCSN to open twenty of these schools in a set time frame. Steinhardt even has one of his own employees on Hatikvah’s very tiny Board of Trustees. You are also leaving out that Tikum Olam was also a Steinhardt/HCSN- supported school until the federal government started investigating falsified documents in its application; and that a Hatikvah Board member and parent actually signed off on Tikum Olam’s falsified application.”

Also, enough with the he-said, she-said about the school district. You’re falling for the charter school’s propaganda, which is not surprising since you do not live in town and have to rely on opinions from the school. Do you have any legitimate reason to believe that the school district is participating in any form of action against this school, since it rightfully pointed out the gaps in the Hatikvah’s approval over two years ago?

Move on, Bertin? This is my child and her classmates baring the brunt of your non-organic charter forced on my town. I will not move on! I am perfectly capable of pushing for change at the state level and fighting for my kid’s school at the same time. Are you working towards either, while you harm my town? If you do not wish to discuss Hatikvah’s malfeasance, stop introducing it into the discussion.

Hatikvah provides an alternative to the families of East Brunswick. There is no malfeasance. It is unfortunate that our state’s charter school legislation is as flawed as it is, forcing charter schools to serve one or a few school districts rather than a broader area that would minimize their negative fiscal impact on individual communities.

That said, if you want to pick a fight, why not pick it with your school district and ask them why they haven’t utilized the inter-district school choice program to fill the vacancies left by the families who have chosen to send their children to Hatikvah and replace their lost funds? Do you really think that it would be that hard to find enough families in New Brunswick who would love to give their children a chance to get a far better education? I don’t.

It is a shame that you do not get that I have all of the respect in the world for the East Brunswick schools and appreciate the fiscal problems that the presence of a charter school like Hatikvah creates. I am not looking to have a fight with you. What I am looking for are solutions to our problems that will enable Hatikvah to exist without negatively impacting the East Brunswick school district’s financial situation.

In my opinion, the inter-district school choice program is the best option, but for that to be an option, the people of East Brunswick have to be OK about children from New Brunswick attending the same schools as their children. Would you be OK with this? Would most of your fellow parents?

Since I’m not an expert on NJ, I won’t comment specifically on your situation. However, in Minnesota and some other places, state law allows students to move across district lines to attend schools in other districts. That applies to both district and chartered public schools. That seems like a better option that having wealthy districts have detectives to track down people trying to get into their districts.

Diane has been asked several times if she is troubled by virtually all white suburban districts. No response. But if she were Secretary of Ed she would end federal funding for charters.

So wealthy whites have lots of choice, and low income folks of various races are stuck with whatever the local board provides. No wonder Rosa Parks tried to start charters. No wonder Kenneth Clark urged creation of new public schools outside the control of local school boards.

“Local control, so much praised by some opponents of chartering , was code for “we”ll keep you folks in your place. We know what’s best for you.”

Ironically, Joe Namath, the school Bertin is referring to was specifically created for and frequently marketed in town as a way to attract more Jewish families into town , as the number of non-orthodox Jewish familes has been falling in town. Since Bertin can hide behind not hearing the local chatter, in town, many Jewish families see this school as a way to slow the trend of various minority groups moving into town. Bertin himself posted on another of Diane’s pages explaining the benefits he sees in sending his daughter to a school with more children of her same religion. I see the diversity in our schools and our town as a benefit. Unfortunately, not everyone sees it that way.

Not only is your assessment of East Brunswick’s Jewish community’s attitudes towards people of color not credible, Lynn Anne, it is not even logical? Even if the “non-Orthodox Jewish families” were as diabolical as you describe, how would Hatikvah slow the trend of anyone moving into town, much less “various minority groups”? As far as your misrepresentation of what I have written elsewhere is concerned, one of the benefits of Hatikvah’s diversity is that there isn’t the preponderance of a dominant cultural norm imposing itself on those who are different from it in the same way that there is at most suburban public schools.

While there is a significant Jewish population in the school, the parents and staff are hypersensitive about creating a learning environment where everyone’s culture is valued and nobody feels as if a dominant culture is being imposed on them. That said, your unwillingness to answer my question about East Brunswick’s unwillingness to replace its lost funds and students with funds and students from New Brunswick through the inter-district school choice program speaks volumes about your true attitude towards diversity. Methinks thou dost protesth too much.

There are two reason the bandage to the cuts Hatikvah has created are not reasonable fixes.

1) The first is that you have not taken into account the number of students filling classroom seats versus funding. For example, the bandage would do nothing for Highland Park who has lost the same percentage of students as East Brunswick to this school. In the case of Highland Park, none of those students came from public school families. So, you would give them back their funding, but you would also increase their student body by a significant amount.

2) This would only be an acceptable option if Hatikvah started serving a population similar to the districts. Otherwise, I see your bandage as just another disgusting attempt by Hatikvah to harm the district and skew the playing field in its direction. If Hatikvah wants to start serving the same percentage of free/reduced lunch students as the district, if Hatikvah wants to serve the same percentage of students with special needs in totality and also the same percentage of high-severity special needs students as the district, and if Hatikvah received populations of students from sending districts that reflected those sending districts – then, and only then would it be an acceptable bandage. Otherwise, forcing the district to raise its number of students from lower-income towns while not expecting an ounce of the same medicine from Hatikvah is appalling and says much about the school itself.

I can’t speak to the circles in which you run, Lynn Anne, but I think that it is wrong to paint all of the Hatikvah families with the same broad brush that you would paint the people to whom you refer, just as it would be wrong for me to assume that everyone in East Brunswick is as narrow-minded and short-sighted as you are.

I am not quite sure where you are getting your numbers from, Lynn Anne. It is my understanding that Highland Park has lost somewhere around 10 students to Hatikvah, costing the district approximately $160,000. Even if all of those 10 students had never been enrolled previously in the public schools, there is no reason that the public schools in Highland Park could not absorb an additional 10 students from New Brunswick. The question is whether or not they want to. The same is true for East Brunswick’s schools.

This would be far less of an issue if we had county school districts instead of local school districts and if charter schools had the cooperation of public schools to market themselves to their families. If Hatikvah was allowed/required to market themselves and serve the entire county equally, I am confident that their demographics would more closely resemble the county as a whole.

The factor here that you ignore, purposefully or otherwise, is that a major component of school choice is highly engaged parents choosing something better or different for their children. In suburban districts like East Brunswick, there is far less disparity with regards to the engagement level of parents than there is in urban districts where the difficult circumstances that so many families face make it much harder if not nearly impossible to be as engaged in their children’s education.

Yet even against all odds, there are some children who are able to perform at significantly higher levels in this environment than their peers. This is usually, but not always, a result of having more engaged parents. Parents who are more engaged in their children’s education are also more likely to explore and pursue better options for their children whether those options are a charter school like Hatikvah or a traditional school district like East Brunswick or Highland Park.

I can understand why you might think that adding children from New Brunswick would harm your school district. It is the same kind of narrow-minded and short-sighted thinking that led to you assuming that all Hatikvah families are like the people who you described in your previous comment. In both cases, you are wrong. There is no doubt in my mind that both suburban charter and traditional schools can absorb low-income children from urban areas with little to no difficulty. I am not sure if the same is true for special needs children.

The problem with addressing the needs of special needs children is that most people just look at them in terms of the cost of addressing those needs and don’t put any thought into the educational dynamics involved in creating an effective learning environment for them. I am not a special education teacher, so I cannot say for sure, but my feeling is that if charter schools were required to have the same percentage of special needs students as their sending districts, it is unlikely that they would be able to serve those special needs students as well as a traditional school, because of their comparatively smaller population and lack of the necessary critical mass of resources required for them to be educated effectively.

So you can play all of the head count games that you want, Lynn Anne, but your narrow-mindedness and short-sightedness with regards to your perspectives towards your peers and towards the low-income families of New Brunswick as ugly as they might be, is nothing compared to your willingness to cast out the special needs children in your district to a learning environment that may not necessarily be as effective or as suitable for serving their needs as the schools in your district, simply because it might be marginally cheaper and easier for those schools.

Charter schools are supposed to be laboratories for innovation, not just smaller versions of traditional schools. Just because they might be able to experiment with different approaches to education doesn’t mean that they can or should even try to do all of the same things as traditional schools. This is why the mantra espoused by those privatization profiteers who advocate for a corporatist model and the competition that it breeds between charter schools and traditional schools is so disgusting. There should be no competition between schools. Instead, they should be components of a larger, educational mosaic that satisfies different needs in different ways.

Bertin, the school only had a handful of founders and one of them repeatedly posts on local East Brunswick boards that a major benefit of Hatikvah is that it competes with the public schools and that it is the competition that will improve our schools. How can you possibly denounce the competition between the charter and traditional schools when a Hatikvah founder is specifically calling for competition?

I think you should re-read what has been written here. I don’t see anyone painting all Hatikvah supporters with a broad stroke.

“Bertin, I never describe those motives to an entire community. I do ascribe those motives to a portion of my community who I hear speak of such things with my own ears.”

If you apply what Lynn Anne wrote here to everything else that she writes about Hatikvah, it is clear that her hostility towards a diverse community of learning families is fueled by her limited experiences with the people who she knows.

Everyone is entitled to their own opinion and I would imagine that most proponents of charter schools in general find value in competition between charter schools and traditional schools. I do not.

This is what is great about Hatikvah. I do not have to agree with everything that its founders believe to find value in what the school offers my children, just as I do not have to demonize traditional schools to find value in some charter schools.

The problems that face public education in our state and country are far too complex to be solved with them and us attitudes. This is why people who truly believe in public education should work together rather than against one another to solve the problems that face public education.

Yet we instead waste time and energy on Hatikvah, opened with an intent to create a competitive relationship with our schools. It does appear, Bertin, that you would defend this school no matter what you learn about it.
I kept an open mind about the school, until I did my homework. I still keep an open mind, despite no one presenting any evidence to the contrary of what I’ve learned.
I do wonder, what is it that makes you defend this school no matter how ugly the intentions or actions.

I have yet to see any actions or intentions that are as ugly as those that you describe. You claim that one of the founders argues that competition between charter schools and traditional schools is good. That is her/his opinion and there is nothing ugly about it. It is just different than mine. I do not believe in going to war with people with whom I disagree.

Conversely, everything that I have experienced with regards to my daughter’s education has been anything but ugly. The teachers go above and beyond for their students to a degree that I have never seen elsewhere. Parents are more engaged than I have ever seen elsewhere. The inter-student dynamics are more positive than I have ever seen elsewhere.

This is not to say that the same is not true for the East Brunswick public schools. The big difference is that the East Brunswick public schools were never an option for my family. Maybe if they had been, I would have chosen them over Hatikvah.

What is ugly is the depths and lengths that Hatikvah’s opponents will go to try to defeat and eliminate, or in lieu of either, harass the school and its families in an attempt to make it go away. That is the ultimate waste of time, energy, money, good will, and every other resource of value that either side might have at its disposal.

Harassment? Wow, Bertin. That is a very big accusation. Unless you have some type of evidence of harassment, I’d say you fit in quite well over there – making empty accusations in an attempt to silence your critics. Just, Wow!

What would you call the complaint that led to the town council overturning the Zoning Board’s decision regarding Hatikvah’s new building? I guess that it could just as easily be called the tyranny of the majority, but I think that harassment works too. I am sure that you will defend it as democracy in action, which is why that conversations like this are pointless.

Thanks for your efforts, Bertin. You clearly are on the side of those who want to expand opportunity for families. One of the things that stuns some people in suburban areas is that not everyone is happy with their district public schools.

Families in all communities benefit from having public school options, a bit like families in all communities benefit from being able to choose from among different candidates running for office.

Somehow, the concept of providing options seems fine in elections. But for some, having distinctive options among schools is somehow suspect when it comes to public education.

“Charter schools allow middle-class progressives the ability to appease guilt-free their inner (and closeted) Libertarian.
When I offer accurate, evidence-based generalizations about charter schools, they respond, “But my child’s charter school is wonderful and much better than the school we were zoned for!””